Travelling with Djinns

Nov 29, 2025 7:14 AM

Author:Jamal Mahjoub

Yasin is driving through Europe in a dilapidated Peugeot 504 with his seven-year-old son Leo. He's not sure where they're going. He just knows he's thirty-seven years old, his wife is about to divorce him and this is his last chance to explain to his son who he is and where he comes from. The problem is that Yasin isn't sure of the answer to these questions himself. Born in the Sudan to an English mother and an Arab father, he has two passports but no national identity. As he and Leo drift through Germany to Paris in search of Europe's history, and onwards through Provence to Spain to find Yasin's ex-lover and his lost brother, Yasin reflects on the tragic-comic ironies of his displaced life and the kind of mixed-up world his son will inhabit. 'An exceptionally gifted novelist' Le Monde

Reviews

'She writes like an angel and thinks like the devil. Joughin is a major discovery'

—— Fay Weldon

'An exciting new talent'

—— Sunday Telegraph

'Sheena Joughin has an unusual clarity of voice and a crafty duality, something both brooding and light, in her writing. The hurts and nastinesses between her characters are paralleled with a casual persistence of good nature and good humour in this funny, piercing book about lostness, childishness and growing up'

—— Ali Smith , The Times Literary Supplement

'Very funny, very edgy, very acute. I love this book'

—— Julie Burchill

'[Joughin] is already a mistress of mordant comedy... a talent to watch'

—— Daily Mail

'Joughin has a merciless eye for unflattering detail and for the insecurities of both sexes ... extremely funny'

—— Daily Telegraph

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